American Modernism: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jessica Todd Smith is the Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art and Manager of the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she is responsible for American painting and sculpture made between 1900 and 1960. She was Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, where she worked from 2002-2016. At the Huntington, she helped triple the gallery space for the American art collection, with its most recent expansion opening in July 2014. She organized exhibitions including Pressed in Time: American Prints 1905-1950(2007-8) and Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame(2011), which were accompanied by publications. Smith earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and held internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Harvard University Art Museums. She obtained her A.B. from Harvard University where she graduated summa cum laude.

With an emphasis on painting and sculpture made in the United States between 1910 and 1950, this gorgeously illustrated volume offers a rich introduction to American modernism through the world-class collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The lively text, which includes previously unpublished archival photos, examines the roles that the museum and the city of Philadelphia played in promoting modernism from its inception. Works by internationally acclaimed artists from the circle of photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Sheeler, are featured here alongside works by artists left outside the mainstream of art history. The book draws visual connections among works by these artists while creating compelling juxtapositions that tell a story of modern American art that is unique to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.